2 Effects

In Europe, the Treaty changed planned building programs for most of the signatories. Almost all of the forces built new designs in the new " heavy cruiser" class, but at the same time few new battleships were built. Instead, extensive conversions were made to existing battleships and battlecruisers, resulting in fleets in World War II that consisted primarily of ships laid-down before World War I.

A number of attempts were made to build new battleship designs within the Treaty limitations. The need to increase armor and firepower while keeping weight under the Washington limit resulted in experimental new designs like the British Nelson Class and the French Richelieu.

In general ship effectiveness is related to speed, armor and armament. Weight is related to ship length which permits higher speeds. Each nation used a different approach to circumvent the treaties. The US used high strength boilers for higher speeds in a smaller ship. Germany used high strength steels for better armor and lower weight. Great Britain designed ships that could have armor added after a war began. Italy simply lied about the tonnage of their ships. Japan withdrew from the treaty in 1936, and continued the building program that they had previously begun, to include placing 18.1 inch guns on the Battleship Yamoto.

Few European forces operated at long ranges from land, and therefore there was little interest in aircraft carrier construction. The Germans, French and Italians did not bother with carriers until WWII was clearly looming, at which point all of them started construction in small numbers. The Royal Navy, tasked with long-range operations the world over, clearly needed carriers and so continued construction. Between 1920 (prior to the treaty) and the start of WWII the British build six new carriers of various one-off classes. The US had 7 carriers at the start of the war, including the old CV-1 Langly. Japan had 10 carriers at the start of the war.

The effects of the Treaty on the United States could not have been more different. The Treaty, coupled with the damage to the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, was a major cause of the United States Navy's conversion from a battleship fleet to a carrier-based force.

The United States was over the limits in capital ships when the treaty was ratified, and had to decommission or disarm several older vessels in order to comply. However, the only aircraft carrier in the US fleet before the treaty was signed was USS Langley (CV-1) (11,500 tons), a converted collier. Not only did carriers have separate limits, but as an experimental vessel, Langley did not count against the tonnage restrictions. The US Navy thus had a free rein to build carriers.

In the 1920s the Department of the Navy had a low opinion of the concept of naval aviation despite (or perhaps because of) Billy Mitchell's 1921 success in using Army bombers to sink the captured German battleship Ostfriesland). However, to comply with the treaty, two newly constucted battlecruisers, USS Lexington (CV-2) (41,000 tons) and USS Saratoga (CV-3) (33,000 tons), had to be disposed of. They were converted into carriers, although that choice was only slightly preferred over scrapping.

In 1931, the United States was still well under the treaty's limit on carriers. USS Ranger (CV-4) (14,500 tons) was the first US carrier designed as such - no other class of capital ship could be built - and the Navy began incorporating the lessons from those first four carriers into the design of two more. In 1933, Congress passed Franklin Roosevelt's " New Deal" package of legislation, which included nearly $40 million for the two new carriers: USS Yorktown (CV-5) (19,800 tons) and USS Enterprise (CV-6) (19,800 tons). The US carrier fleet now totalled 128,100 tons and there it remained until the treaty was terminated by Japan in 1936.

By then, the US Navy had overcome its antipathy toward carriers. The keel of USS Wasp (CV-7) (14,700 tons) was laid down on April 1, 1936.

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